#howtoartdirect

For brand new shiny ADs, absolutely! If you could do everything, you would...do....well, you wouldn’t have the time to do EVERYTHING. But nobody (nobody reasonable, anyways) expects an administrator to be an expert in all areas they administrate, especially at first!  

I should qualify this with saying that the phrase “Art Director” means something different for every industry, and darn near every company and studio. Since you’re dealing with both 2D and 3D I’m assuming you’re in video games or animation, so Imma roll with generally how those industries are put together.

As no doubt you’ve discovered by now (and so many new ADs are surprised at this), there is often very little art making in art direction. It is, very VERY often, a COMPLETELY different skillset from creating art.  (Congratulations on surviving your first year of flinging your body on the most dangerous metaphorical fire to put it out, hey!) Most Art Directors spend the majority of their time communicating, clarifying, and mediating the big picture vision and things like timeline expectations and budgets with the other teams and the stakeholders to manage expectations and clear obstacles so your people can do their jobs without all that back and forth getting underfoot. You’re an ambassador, the voice of your team to other teams, and the voice of everyone else to your team.

Because of that, clarity of communication, being able to define the goalpost and not keep moving it, not necessarily the technical knowledge of how to do every little thing, is what is required of you. So it sounds like you’ve got a leg up; an AD who listens to their team is a great thing!   

-Agent Critique